from the flexing-muscle-and-looking-stupid dept

Here's copyright once again playing the thug role because rights must be enforced and the subsequent harm, etc. and so forth until things are broken and people are angry and in the end, the "victor" is able to walk away from a battle not worth fighting, much less worth winning. (via Nate Hoffelder)

Sam Morris, a UK mobile and web designer currently employed with The Guardian, put together a few mobile/computer wallpapers based on the distinctive seat patterns found in the London Underground. Here are two examples of his creations:

It's such a lightweight project (possibly not in terms of effort, but in the scheme of things, as they say) that it's surprising it drew the attention of Transport for London, the agency that ostensibly controls all things related to the London Underground. (This is not its first time playing the role of IP thug.)

Morris didn't charge for these wallpapers, nor did he attempt to make it appear as though his work was officially-sanctioned or otherwise a part of Transport for London's purview. And yet, TFL decided this fun little project that united fans of the Tube and pleasurably tacky patterns needed to go. A creative outlet now memorialized by this tweet...

Unfortunately due to a copyright claim by Transport for London, the backgrounds are no longer available for download.

I'd like to quickly thank everyone who visited the site over the past week for your enthusiasm.

One whole week before a government agency throttled it into nonexistence. Apparently, TFL said it sells products of its own featuring these patterns -- actual, physical products -- and that was enough to head off someone who wasn't even competing in the same space. Morris was not even competing, period. He offered free wallpapers for devices and could easily have partnered with with TFL to add his work to its offerings.

Or it just could have left it alone and enjoyed the small tribute Sam Morris had created. Now, all it has is a useless assertion of rights that has served to do nothing more than turn a small part of the population against it.

from the the-industry-loses-another-generation dept

It's not like this wasn't easily predictable, but as the entertainment industry has "succeeded" in taking down Megaupload and continues to move against The Pirate Bay and others, anyone who's followed this space had to have known that file sharing would just move one step further underground. We've seen the same thing after every single "victory" against file sharing since Napster was shut down. Each time, it moves to a system slightly more underground and more distributed. The early ones were still easy to take down but as they get further underground, it just becomes worse for the industry (and makes it that much harder to win back those users). The latest news is that there's been massive uptake of a growing number of anonymous, decentralized file-sharing tools. As is pretty typical in these "shift" periods, it's still not clear which systems will "win" out over the others, but the leaders are starting to emerge. The Torrentfreak article above mentions players like Tribler and RetroShare. People in our comments have been discussing both, as well as Ares Galaxy. Who knows if any of these apps are actually any good, but it seems pretty clear that people are continuing to file share -- they're just finding ways to do so that are even harder to track down and stop. How long until the legacy entertainment industry starts publishing articles about these evil anonymous, decentralized file sharing systems and demanding new laws against them?

from the cause-and-effect dept

Two of the bigger stories these days are the US government's copyright expansionist policies with domain name seizures and bills like COICA and (of course) the whole Wikileaks story. We've noted some similarities between large centralized systems reacting badly to distributed systems, but there's also a much more direct connection as well. Glyn Moody points us to a blog post by Brendan Scott that lays out the basic fact that the distributed distribution tools that Wikileaks now relies on were mainly developed in response to constant copyright expansionism at the behest of the US government (on behalf of the entertainment industry). As Scott notes, he wonders if the US government will recognize this. However, given that it's still pushing for even greater copyright expansionism (which will only make the "leaks" issue more difficult to control), it appears that very few in power actually understand this.

from the embracing-fans-is-a-good-thing dept

This week, for our Case Study Series (check that link to see all previous case studies), we've got a fun one. Last week, we wrote about Steve Lieber, the comic artist who discovered his recent work Underground was being scanned and placed online in a 4chan forum. That story generated a ton of discussion, with some criticism, and plenty of interest in Steve's overall story. Steve agreed to do this interview, and to make it even better, his studio-mate Erika Moen, who jumped into the conversation both on 4chan and here at Techdirt joined the interview as well. Erika's perhaps most well-known for her comic DAR!. The top portion of this post will be the case study writeup, based on my conversation with both Steve and Erika, and after the jump I have the entire transcript of the interview if you'd like to see the full thing.

One of the points that we really try to get across here on Techdirt in discussing various business models and dealing with a changing marketplace is that one of the absolute key aspects is learning how to connect with fans (CwF) at a really deep level. That means a few things: it means going beyond just checking the boxes, but figuring out (a) what your fans want from you and (b) how you might deliver it, even if it may be contrary to your initial impression. And, part of that is often recognizing that when people are making unauthorized copies of your work, it's not because they're "thieves" or "immoral" or (as one of our commenters insists) "douchebags." Often, it's because they really love the work, and they want to experience it in a different way or they want to share that with others. What some people look at as "piracy," others realize is part of the way humans experience culture.

So, given that this is happening, there are all sorts of ways you can react. You can resort to the insults and name calling. You can call the lawyers and the FBI and send out angry announcements. You can call up your local elected official or pay for a lobbyist to "change the laws!" Or... you can embrace the fans, understand (1) what it is they're trying to tell you, (2) see if there's any way to provide that, and (3) use the sharing to your advantage. Now, when we posted Steve Lieber's story, one of the points that we tried to highlight in the post was that this wasn't just a case of "piracy leading to greater sales." That's similar to the whole "give it away and pray" concept. Instead, what made the Lieber story interesting was that it was clear that he engaged these fans (both old and new), and that's what drove them to want to support him and his work.

The moral of the story was not "gee, 'piracy' is good." The moral of the story was that engaging your fans in intelligent and meaningful ways, often where and how they want to engage can help you do much better than you would have otherwise. It doesn't mean "engage and you're an automatic success." It doesn't mean "engage and you'll never have to work again." It means "engage and you'll do better than you would have otherwise."

Lieber's case is a clear example of that. He admits that when he first heard about his work he had "the usual knee-jerk irritation," assuming that there was just some massive datadump of links to downloads. But when he went to 4chan, he realized it was something different:

I assumed I'd see a rapidshare link to a zip file with my book and twenty others, and someone posting a picture of a horse autopsy. Instead I arrived up at /co/ and saw a long thread in which "Internet Man," the guy who posted my book, had done so one page at a time. He had to hit "browse" and "upload" over a hundred times to post the book, and all throughout, he was talking about how great it was, nagging people to read it and discuss the story with him. That didn't feel like a pirate. That felt like a fan. And indeed, some people were starting to talk about it. So I did what I always do. I joined the conversation.

Meanwhile, his studio-mate, Erika, joined the conversation for a couple of reasons. Not only is she just interested in the whole business model issue, and loves to get involved in such discussions, she also wanted to plug Steve's book, noting that he had been "too much of a gentleman" to suggest people buy the physical book.

I actually found this part of Erika's response the most fascinating of all. Part of the reason she joined the conversation was to share and help others learn from the overall experience. It's a recognition of how a true community works, where different folks in the community help each other out:

The second time I spoke up was to explain the logic behind why someone would publish their book for no pay. If you have no experience in the comics world and are unfamiliar with how Image works, yes, that could look like a bad deal. The world of publishing is completely fascinating to me and I love to prattle on about it any chance I get. At the last Stumptown Comics Fest I even hosted and recorded a panel on self-publishing, because the more people that are informed, the more people can try it out for themselves. I never could have produced all my books and navigated being self-employed without all the help and support I received from my friends who had done it before me, so I like to pay it forward to anyone if I can.

Erika's definitely been a big believer not just in engaging with the community, but also in how "free" can be an important component of a business model, noting that DAR!, as a free comic, acts as an advertisement for the books of archives, which she can sell. She's also realized that free can create new opportunities, even in the physical world:

There is one active marketing tool that I do use at comic conventions that has really helped. I give away a free sampler of the comic in the form of a single sheet of printer paper, folded in half to be a flier containing four of my favorite strips. I spend about $40 on 500 copies and almost always run out by the end of the convention--which large portion of my sales coming from people who had never seen my comic before coming back to buy the book because they enjoyed the sampler. It has been genuinely effective. I can count on the fact that I will sell at least 100 books a con and I have no doubt the flier is the cause behind half of those sales.

While Steve has always been big into engaging with fans, he hadn't thought that much about the value of free works in combination with that engagement, but that's changing. He says that after this experience, he's definitely going to make more works downloadable and shareable. Some of his work is with the big comic shops (his next book is from DC Comics), and he doubts he'll be able to release those freely, but his own works are going to be available. Part of this experience was making the key realization that obscurity appears to be a much bigger problem than piracy:

Scans of my comics are sitting on hundreds of servers in countries I can't even spell. My stuff will be out there for free, no matter what. Ok. So now what? My goal is to tell good comics stories. I'd like people to read them in print editions, because I love print, and I think that's where I think my art looks best. Everything I've seen tells me that the people who have read my work digitally are more likely to pick it up in print than people who don't know my stuff at all.

Of course, the big question that caused a lot of discussion was how well did the comic actually sell, with some arguing that the following chart, without a scale or absolute numbers didn't tell very much:

However, the details suggest that this little engagement did quite well. Again, even if you didn't have the absolute numbers, the key point that we've been highlighting is that by engaging, you can do better than you would have otherwise, and that seems quite clear from the chart, no matter what the absolute numbers are. However, let's dig into some of the details. First, it's important to note that, while the book got tremendous reviews, it just didn't sell very well. Steve noted that both he and Jeff Parker (the author of Underground) have decently high profiles due to past and current work, but for whatever reason, Underground just didn't sell all that well when it was released. As he noted "it happens," and said that "we gave it our best shot and it was time to move on." So they had pretty much stopped thinking about Underground until all this happened.

So, once Steve (and Erika) engaged, what happened? Well, the book went from a random sale every here and there via their Etsy store, to over 150 sales in just as few days. And that's just the versions on Etsy (which contained a few different options), with the most popular being the signed book by the Jeff and Steve. The book (unsigned) is also available on Amazon, and Steve and Jeff won't know about sales there until their next monthly statement, however, there are indications that it's been selling well on Amazon as well -- and... people have just been hitting the "donate" button on the website as well:

Our Amazon rankings skyrocketed and stayed there for days. We were listed as #7 on Amazon's manga list, (a weird classification, but whatever.) And on the charts for our own publisher, Image Comics, we were the only book to crack the top ten that wasn't a volume of The Walking Dead (source of the much-hyped AMC tv series.) The donation button been insane too. Lots of $5.00 donations with requests for another book.

The key point in all of this, again, comes back to the one thing that we started this case study off with: the engagement was key. Connecting with the fans, in combination with the free work, is what made this work. Erika noted that many of the people who ordered on Etsy or who donated left notes basically saying that it was Steve's "totally awesome" participation in the community that drove them to willingly (happily) give him their money. She also notes that Steve didn't just join in the conversation, but he really got involved. As she noted she saw him go in there "out-niceing and out-classing everyone, even the people trying to troll him." That seems to have worked wonders...

from the connect-with-fans dept

Paul Watson points us to yet another example of how engaging with fans of your work (even if, technically, they infringed on your copyrights) can lead to pretty happy outcomes for everyone. The basic details are that comic book artist Steve Lieber discovered that folks at 4chan had scanned in and uploaded every page of his graphic novel Underground. Now, the typical reaction is to freak out, scream "piracy," whine about "losses" and demand that "something must be done." But, in a world where obscurity is really a much bigger issue than "piracy," another option is to actually engage with those fans who liked his work so much that they put in the effort to share it with the world. And that's exactly what Lieber did. He went to the site and actually started talking about the work with the folks on 4chan (image from Paul):

Nice. But, what did it actually mean? Well, the day after he engaged with fans on 4chan, Lieber posted a blog post highlighting his sales. As he says, "pictures help us learn."

from the it-doesn't-make-them-buy dept

Admittedly it's just an estimate, but reports coming out of Sweden suggest that, rather than stop file sharing, under the new IPRED law, a growing number of file sharing users have simply gone further underground using anonymizing services. Of course, this shouldn't surprise anyone, as plenty of people have been predicting that's exactly that would happen for the better part of a decade. You would think that folks in the entertainment industry might actually pay attention since those predictions from years back have come true. But instead, they'd rather attack those of us who have pointed out why their strategy isn't working. At what point do they stop and realize that their critics actually are giving them good advice?